Pharmaceuticals are being offered in various kinds of packaging. In many cases such packaging holds several doses, such as pills, individually packed but physically interconnected. Each dose can be removed from the packaging at the moment the dose is to be administered.
The packaging has to meet many requirements. The packaging must for instance contain information about the application of the pharmaceutical, and must have a registration number to identify the pharmaceutical, expiration date for quality control, a charge or lot number to allow traceability and often also a barcode for machine readability. The packaging also often provides protection of the pharmaceutical against environmental influences to prevent deterioration between the moment of production and the moment of application (administering).
Because the individual doses of the pharmaceuticals are often small and to allow standardization of production the information is often applied to the external packaging instead of the actual packaging of the dose.
It is desirable, as evident from efforts by pharmacists, to be able to provide the information about the pharmaceutical with each individual dose in order to ensure the correct administering of the pharmaceutical to the patient.
A common type of packaging for one or more doses is a cavity formed around the dose by two layers that are meet around the dose and form a seal where they meet. The dose can be removed from the cavity by applying pressure to one side of the cavity and either forcing the seal apart or fracturing one of the two layers.
Pharmaceuticals are known to be repackaged. In such a repackaging operation either the entire non-severed blister with multiple doses is being inserted into a new external package or the dose is being removed from the blister and put into another blister or a container of another kind.
Attempts have been made to add the desired information to the blister of the individual dose. The amount of information that can be added is directly linked to the area available to apply the sticker to and as such often severely limited. Attempts to solve this problem by repackaging the dose into a larger blister result in problems with quality control requirements since the origin of the pharmaceutical can no longer be established beyond doubt. This further results in liability issues in case of problems arising from the use of the pharmaceutical.
It is an objective of the present invention to provide a method of applying additional information to a pharmaceutical in a blister and at the same time preventing quality control issues.